Monday, July 21, 2014

Branding a Human Being

How would you go about naming your baby?

There is no right or wrong answer. Yet, this decision will influence your baby for the rest of his life.

From bullying at school, to an unfortunate name match with an assassin or terrorist, to a stereotypical image that could lead a potential employer to scrap your grown baby's curriculum vitae in the future (blame Freakonomics for pinning this idea into my head)... The consequences are endless.

We tried it all... but

Media - After online searches, surfing numerous naming websites, personality name analysis and statistics, we resorted to mobile applications, and eventually reached out to the more traditional medium: books. Three books down, a highlighter in hand, our list was just getting bigger and bigger.

Our Baby

Classification - 'Gender would eliminate half of our options', we rationalized, so we waited, until... 'It's a girl!' the doctor confirmed.

Numbers - I created an excel sheet on Google Drive where we both listed our favourite names and each graded them all, and then our grades would add up to a total. I thought I had it figured out. I thought I could make this decision a pragmatic one, with numbers.

& ended-up with...

A while later, I had found it, the perfect name. I knew it in my heart and I couldn't wait for my husband's feedback. As I was getting ready to announce it, he proposed a name himself... Now, you tell me, what are the odds that we come up with the same name at once?

It was the same name.

We ditched the excel sheet. our name was 'most likely' to be it.

My Pregnant Belly

Later, I received a text from a close friend: 'Gia' it read. 'it means God is Gracious.' she continued. 'I am looking up baby names for you'. She explained.

I called her in awe. 'How did you know?' - 'Know what?' she muttered. She had no clue it was the name we had chosen.

Why am I bringing this up now?

I recently saw the actor James Van Der Beek announce, on television, how he and his wife named their newborn: He said that he asked his wife if she had a name, and she said 'only one name came to me', and only one name had come to him too.

It was one and the same.

Moral of the story...

While I cannot assume that everyone goes through the same experience, I would like to believe that there is some kind of divine intervention, as some choices are just bigger than just you and me and require a bigger understanding of things to come.

If this is the case for naming a human, what about naming a product or an organization?